How selection leads to Quality

As a Roaster and Coffee Shop manager it has been a great experience to work on a coffee farm for a season.  I have learned so much about what goes into a great cup of coffee.  The farming is extremely important, as one of my friends say " before you harvest you are adding quality, after harvest you can only preserve what is there"


This post is about the preserving the quality that is there.  Hopefully soon I will write about farming or "adding quality to the bean".


Step 1
Select only the ripe cherries from the trees when you harvest.  This is easier said than done.  In fact it can be terribly difficult to get the worker harvesting the cherries to change.  This year we offered them 30% more to only harvest ripe cherries.  Also, I would check each persons bags personally at then end of the day and praise the ones that did the best.  One of the things that works the best is to have workers taste a fully ripe cherry and then a almost ripe.  When they personally test the difference the light goes on.  This proved to be the big turning point.


Step 2
Hand sort each bag of coffee that is harvested.  Each person has to sort out the green and half green cherries.

All of the unripe cherries are sun dried as natural processed coffee.  This will allow them to ripen in the sun longer.


Step 3
The ripe cherries are put in a tank of water and the floaters are processed separately as seconds.


Step 4
Any cherries that make it through the de-pulper with the pulp on, go to the seconds.


Step 5
The canal:  After fermenting, the coffee is washed.  The washing takes place in a canal where the dense beens are separated from the less dense.  The less dense go to the seconds pile.
(See picture in the previous post)


Then on to the dry mill will they will be sorted for size, density, color.  Through this process only the best beans make it to cup..... well that is if you buy good coffee!

Full washed....semi-washed... pulped natrual...Natural

This week we cupped 4 samples all from Finca Mama Carmen 100% Bourbon , one each of:

• full washed
• pulped natural
• Natural
• 90% washed

This is what we noted.

The full washed was the most balanced.  

Good acidity, Amazing flavor, full body, flavor of raisins, very nice.

Then pulped natural (de-pulped and straight to the patio) had great acidity but lacked balance.  The body was lacking.  ( I have to admit I was expecting the most from this coffee and was disappointed)

We see this a lot where body and acidity seem to be on a balance beam.  When one goes up the other can go down.

The Natural was more balanced similar acidity and body, great balance, the main difference was that  the flavor profile was more berry than raisins we found in the full washed.

The winner the 90% washed.  Great acidity, perfect balance, full body. We pulped, fermented in the tanks as normal but didn't wash the honey off of the parchment as much as normal,  just a quick wash and to the patio.  The only problem with that is you don't get as many seconds out in the classifying channel.  The great part and I have been able to hear of similar results from other farmers.

Classifying canal

Caution and disclaimer:  Every coffee is different and another coffee might be better with different processing.  We plan to make the same experiment next year and see if we can confirm these results.